A particular consideration of the poultry processing industry is to prevent poultry products from a condemned bird from being entered into the saleable product stream. In the poultry paw processing sector, this consideration is even more important due to current inconsistent and random control processes of the poultry paws during some known conveying, unloading, and cutting processes. Due to these known control problems, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) currently requires that the industry throw away seven sets of poultry paws (i.e. 14 poultry paws) for each condemned bird. Specifically, the industry must discard the paw set from the actual condemned bird, as well as three neighboring paw sets on each side of the conveying line, to compensate for the high margin of error.
As a result, there is a need in the poultry industry to more precisely and efficiently direct a shackle containing a poultry paw, or other poultry product, from an identified condemned bird from the poultry production line to a disposal line. Additionally or alternatively, there is a need to accurately control the location of each individual poultry paw and set of poultry paws up to the point of cutting and/or disposal.